Rachel, How did your blister repairs end up cosmetically? Is your former M17 still sailing? Thanks, Craig ----- Original Message ----- From: Rachel To: For and about Montgomery Sailboats Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2005 12:14 PM Subject: Blisters My 1981 M-17 (#334-2) had thousands of blisters which I found after I took possession of it (bleah!). They were not large, fluid filled blisters, but small "pimples." Perhaps they had been fluid filled at some point, I'm not sure - the boat had been out of the water for over a year when I bought it. I first took it to a local fiberglass shop that had a good reputation (and the owner mentioned that he had done a blister job on at least one Montgomery, although that's more-or-less hearsay at this point), but the guy turned out to be one of these people who is good at what he does but cannot seem to keep himself from overcommitting, so he just never got to doing my boat. So, I had it *gently* sandblasted, which revealed and opened about 60% of the blisters. At that point we ran into the problem that, because of the lapstrake shapes, it was taking too much good material off the high points where the bottom of each plank would be if they were wood, so we stopped and I ground out the rest by hand, individually, with a Dremel tool and one of those conehead-shaped bits that looks a bit like a pencil eraser in color. People in the know who saw it commented that there were probably air voids between the gelcoat and the first layer of cloth when the boat was laid up, but, that being said, I have no idea of the boats history. From what I've read, Polyester gelcoat is porous by nature, and all of it is prone to blistering to a certain extent. I have a feeling that a few factors keep the M-boats from having blistering be typical problem (in other words, I agree that the majority of them have no blistering problems). 1) Good workmanship 2) Being built in California, which tends to have low-humidity 3) Being mostly trailer boats, they tend to get extensive drying-out periods, regularly, on their trailers I have a feeling that my M-17 had been in warm, Texas waters for a protracted period of time without a "trailer break," which was probably hard on it. Also, it was the first boat in the "new" M-17 molds, although I have no idea if that would have been a factor. At any rate, I can attest to the fact that it is possible for an M-boat to blister, although it's obviously not a common problem. On a side note: Connie, I was interested to read what you said about your Tripp-Lentsch because I'm just in the process of deciding whether to "take on" a project boat that was built in Holland. The one factor I'm not sure about yet is the bottom, as I've not been able to see it out of the water (due to the time of year, all the boats are going into the water and the yard is not interested in hauling a boat until that's over, which will be any day now). I'm hoping not to see blistering because - in addition to all the other work it needs - that would be the last straw and would probably cause me to pass the boat along to someone else. At any rate, I'm curious where your TL was built. The boat I'm looking at says it was built at: Amsterdam Shipyard, Inc. G. DeVries Lentsch, Jr. There is an actual yard number, but in my only photo of it the number is behind a bit of line that's part of the mainsheet traveler... I've read that sometimes the boat hulls were built in one yard, then finished in another, so I'm not sure how that relates to what's on the builder's plate. It was built in 1962. --- Rachel Fatty Knees 7 #302 Former owner, M-17 #334 Former owner, M-15 #517 _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats